Yahoo! has upped its share repurchase program by $5bn as part of its aggressive buyback of stock following the sale of some of its stake in Alibaba Group.

The Purple Palace has already spent $3.1bn buying back common stock so far this year, boosting its share price by around 74 per cent, using the proceeds from selling half of its 40 per cent stake in the Chinese web shopping giant Alibaba.

Partially to fund further stock buyback, Yahoo! also said that it was planning to issue a billion dollars in convertible notes, which can be exchanged for cash or shares. The company intends to use $200m of the money raised to repurchase shares and another portion of the proceeds to cover the cost of hedging the loan.

The rest of the dollars will go into the coffers for the usual "general corporate purposes". Yahoo! said it didn't have any specific uses in mind for the money, although it can be used for acquisitions, and if nothing came up, it might invest the money into other financial products. ®